Practice Fusion Blog

Practice Fusion Announces Investment from Salesforce.com and Cloud Computing Initiative

Practice Fusion to make electronic health record system available on Force.com cloud computing platform.

SAN FRANCISCO – August 05, 2009 – Practice Fusion Inc., the leader in free, web-based physician practice applications, today announced an investment from salesforce.com [NYSE:CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company. The announcement includes an investment into Practice Fusion and the expected launch in late 2009 of the company’s patient health record (PHR) application on Force.com, salesforce.com’s cloud computing development platform. The companies did not disclose the investment details.

“With this investment from salesforce.com, Practice Fusion is now backed by the enterprise cloud computing leader,” said Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion. “The technology, capital and leadership from this partnership will ensure that Practice Fusion continues to outpace our competitors who are sticking with expensive, legacy client/server software. This partnership positions Practice Fusion as the de-facto leader in the electronic health record sector.”

Practice Fusion offers a revolutionary application and delivery model – cloud computing - enabling physician practices to deliver superior care to their patients. Practice Fusion provides free, web-based electronic medical records (EMR), practice management, patient scheduling and more.

Practice Fusion is launching its patient health record on Force.com, salesforce.com's enterprise cloud computing platform. Force.com provides everything companies need to quickly build and deliver business applications in the cloud, including the database, unlimited real-time customization, powerful analytics, real-time workflow and approvals, programmable cloud logic, integration, real-time mobile deployment, programmable user interface and Web site capabilities. Applications built on Force.com benefit from the proven security, reliability and scalability of salesforce.com’s real-time global service infrastructure.

“Bringing cloud computing to the healthcare industry will deliver enormous benefits for patients and physicians,” said Clarence So, senior vice president, strategy, salesforce.com. “Our work with Practice Fusion will accelerate that trend by democratizing access to health records.”

About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company's portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing and service. The company’s Force.com platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) enables customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multi-tenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing.

As of April 30, 2009, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 59,300 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

###

Copyright (c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About Practice Fusion
Practice Fusion addresses the complexities and critical needs of today's healthcare environments by providing a revolutionary, web-based, electronic health record (EHR) application and delivery model for physicians and patients at no cost. As a result, Practice Fusion is one of the fastest growing electronic health record communities in country. Practice Fusion has over 18,000 users in 50 states. For more information on Practice Fusion EHR, please visit twitter.com/practice fusion and http://www.practicefusion.com.

###

Practice Fusion in the San Francisco Business Times

The San Francisco Business Times has published a special health care information technology section in this week's edition. Practice Fusion's CEO, Ryan Howard, was interviewed by by Patrick Hoge for a piece about emerging technology in the Bay Area.

Here's an excerpt from "Tech companies hope to catch health IT windfall":

"Numerous Bay Area technology companies are positioning themselves to benefit from the $19 billion-plus federal stimulus for health care information technology, particularly electronic medical records, either directly or indirectly, through selling hardware, software or consulting services.
...
Nipping at McKesson's heels is Practice Fusion, a venture capital-backed San Francisco startup with 18 employees that is offering doctors in smaller settings free online records management. It makes money with medical ads and by using and selling anonymous patient data. Ryan Howard, Practice Fusion's chairman and CEO, says doctors can use his free service and pocket the federal incentive money, which has no strings on its use."

Read the complete article about health IT online here.

How Can Healthcare Software be Free? Chris Anderson has the Answer

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired, author of The Long Tail and all around tech guru, has a new book out called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. On page 104, Practice Fusion's electronic health record application is featured as a case study:

How can Healthcare Software be Free?

Since November 2007, thousands of physicians have signed up to receive free electronic health record and practice management software from San Francisco-based start-up Practice Fusion. Enterprise software for medical practices can cost $50,000. How can one company give away its e-record system at no charge?

Freemium + advertising. Tapping the freemium model, Practice Fusion offers two versions of its software: a free one that serves ads (a la Google AdSense), and an ad-free one that costs $100 per month. Of the first 2,000 doctors to adopt Practice Fusion's e-record system, less than 10 percent opted to pay. But the real revenue lies elsewhere...

Sell access to your data. Using free software, Practice Fusion attracts a critical mass of users (doctors) who, in turn, create a growing database of patients. Medical associations conducting research on specific conditions require longitudinal health records for a large set of patients. Depending on the focus of a study (think: white, middle-aged, obese males suffering from asthma), each patient's anonymized chart could fetch anywhere from $50 to $500. A physician typically sees about 250 patients, so Practice Fusion's first 2,000 clients translates to 500,000 records. Each chart can be sold multiple times for any number of studies being conducted by various institutions. If each chart generates $500 over time, that revenue would be greater than if Practice Fusion sold the same 2,000 practices software for a one-time fee of $50,000.

You can download the audiobook version of Anderson's new book for free (of course) online.